Pete

I think my only gripe is with the wording of the clue "...parsed as six words...", since it really isn't six *words,* but four words and two letters. I think there was a better way to phrase that. Nitpick aside, though, this was indeed a brilliant misdirection. It was one of the few times I was stumped for this long on a theme and still managed to enjoy it when it finally clicked. Just such a cool concept for a Thursday puzzle.

There were moments of frustration, but I realized I was angry at the idiot who penciled in before me! This was a very fun puzzle, in the strangest sort of way. Perfect gag for April Fools as well. This puzzle was off-the-wall, but in a way that still felt like a solid NYT crossword.

Really neat theme that does indeed fit well for a Monday. Interestingly, I found the *rest* of the puzzle quite a bit trickier than a typical Monday. The clues felt more intermediate than easy to me. I wonder if this was intentional to offset the automatic solving of the theme (once you figure it out). Alternatively, it may have just been a confluence of little things I found to be subjectively hard.

This is one of those gimmicks that's so utterly intuitive and fun that it's kind of shocking nobody's done this exact Thursday trick before. I enjoyed every bit of this puzzle: The construction was beautiful, the trick was tough to figure out but simple and fun once you did. The clues themselves were great. The difficulty was just right for a Thursday (I clocked in with a good-but-not-great time). Kudos to Mr. Faiella. 5/5 No-doubter!

I'm never sure how to rate Monday puzzles, since I breeze through them (comparatively, of course). Usually I try to break my personal record for speed, and when I know I won't, I just finish up and move on. So it's pretty noticeable when I enjoy the Monday theme enough to flat-out stop caring about my time. It was simple and silly, but it totally worked. What a fun little way to start the week!

Outstanding Thursday puzzle! I really enjoy it when I can get some of the themed answers on my own merit, while others require a bit more help from crosses. They weren't obvious, but neither were they impossible without crosses. They were just good. One minor quibble (and this may be with the edit rather than the construction; pardon my ignorance): I felt that 57-across should have been two words. "Companion ship?" I understand the question mark alludes to word play, but usually (I thought) the word play at least still follows basic grammar/spelling rules, but is merely *ordered* in such a way as to throw off the solver. Maybe I'm alone on this one, but it threw me off in the wrong sort of way. Anyway, it was a great puzzle and I've spent too many words on the quibble now.

I share the frustration with many other commenters, though I quite liked the theme, actually. I just thought the clues were unhelpful to the point of being worse than nothing. I'd have rather had a blank than "Proponents of crystal healing," for example.

I really like when I find the theme, then look back at a themed answer with only 1 to 3 letters filled in, then am able to figure it out just by thinking about it (in a reasonable time frame) I did that TWICE today, with LATINOS and THE IRONY. Highly rewarding puzzle for me. Took me quite a bit longer than my Thursday record, but better than my (beginner-biased) average. Hats off to Jem Burch for a challenging but doable Thursday grid.

I wasn't familiar with the phrase for 53A, but was still able to suss it out with other clues. Besides that one stumble, I worked through this Thursday puzzle at a much better clip than average (though still well off of my low Th time). Start to finish, this was a highly enjoyable and rewarding puzzle by Mr. Curry. Well done!

From a premise stand-point, this puzzle was awesome. Perfect use of Thursday trickiness. I was searching for the theme with all of the circled letters filled, and thank goodness I had one of them filled as a "W." Otherwise, I would have been looking for a theme revolving completely around the letter "D." Phenomenal entry today. I had a ton of fun with this one.